GERARD RICHTER, THE REAL ILLUSION OF PAINT

From tomorrow, Jan the 31th until April the 21st 2013, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo of Turin will host and present the exhibition Gerhard Richter – Editions 1965–2012. Richter is a worldwide successful German artist best known for his paintings, featured in museum collections all over the world. Editions are original works of art, not produced as unique pieces but in a certain number of impressions: prints, photographic editions, editions of paintings, artist’s books, artist’s posters and multiples. Richter is nowadays one of the most important living artists. Since the 1960s, he has immersed himself in a rich and varied exploration of painting, continually challenging the medium, encompassing a diverse range of techniques and ideas: his magnificent realist paintings based on photographs, colourful abstractions, portraits, landscapes. Richter has also been working with other media and materials, over-painting his own photographs or photographing details of his own paintings. Gerhard Richter has ever since been one of the first German artists to reflect on the history of National Socialism, creating paintings with victims of the Nazi party and has simultaneously produced abstract and photorealistic painted works, as well as photographs and glass pieces. Following the examples of Picasso, he’s been undermining the concept of the artist’s obligation to maintain a single style. Richter is regarded as the top-selling living artist in fact, in Oct 2012, his Abstraktes Bild set an auction record price for a painting by a living artist at $34milion. His photos projected in canvas replicate the look of the original picture,offering the image a paradoxical photographic appearance; landscapes and portraits, are thus rendered fragile illusions, fleeting conceptions, a photographic imagery as a starting point for his early paintings. Richter’s work is breathtaking. The viewer is projecter in a place where there’s no space, nor time, nor real subject and this sweet timeless illusion through which we can admire Richter’s art is a warm and safe cuddle.